Post navigation

Progress?

Well, I suppose this is a happy ending. Remember the drama surrounding the whitewash of the cover of the YA novel, LIAR? If not, here is a recap in 140 characters or less: Main character is a black girl, but Bloomsbury put a white girl on the cover. After being questioned by readers, the author spoke out, the blogosphere and twitterverse joined in. Bloomsbury insists the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. (Since the character is a liar, who’s to say that she’s not just pretending to be black? Hence the image. #fail.) Now there is a new cover! (Yay, right?)
Micah, the main character of Liar, is dark and wears a short natural haircut. But the new cover girl for LIAR looks like Corrine Bailey Rae!
This is where things get tricky. Twenty-five years ago, many African American parents, librarians, and readers would be concerned that dark-skinned black girls feel marginalized by the prevalence of images of light-skinned girls. (And let us not forget that Alice Walker writes so lovingly of Their Eyes Were Watching God because Janie was the first dark-skinned heroine she had ever read about. And then, Alice Walker gave us Celie, Nettie, and Shug. This representation issue is real. It’s not just talk.) But now, since Bloomsbury took the cover situation to the next level by putting an actual white model on the cover, the new cover (which triggers my inner Pecola Breedlove) is considered to be a victory.
But seriously, this who situation has been very distressing to me. As a brown-skinned kinky-haired black woman who reads and writes about the same, I feel very disrespected as a reader, a writer, and a human being.